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German Beer
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All about German Beer If there is truly any country where beer and
culture are completely united, Germany is it. Beer has always been an important part of the German heritage. Although they
fall third in the world on the list of per person beer consumption (behind the Irish and Czechs), there are quite a number of
breweries in Germany--over thirteen hundred on last count. Germany became the first country to have a beer purity
requirement, which was known as the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot. The regulation was established in 1516 and existed to 1989. It
says that German beers can only be made from barley, hops, and water. After the discovery of yeast, it too was added to the
requirement, the only change in almost five hundred years. While other countries were thinking about how to make a better
ale, Germans were concentrating on lager beers. That’s not to say that Germany doesn’t produce ales as well. In
fact, Germany produces just about every type of beer from light to dark. Beer-making is the biggest enterprise in Bavaria,
with almost half of all German breweries located there. The largest city for German beer production is Dortmund, which is
in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. Munich comes in second. However, both produce over what would be equal to 4 million
U.S. barrels each year. An astounding 5,000 different brands of beer are brewed in Germany. Let’s take a look at a few
brands of German beer. Weizenbier is a beer brewed in Bavaria. Unlike most German beers, it is brewed with wheat instead of
barley. It also uses a special yeast that gives it a somewhat fruity flavor. It is brewed as both a dark and a light beer.
The most popular beer in Germany is Pilsner, also just referred to as Pils. Pils is a light lager beer that was first brewed
in the 1800s in Pilsen, Bohemia, which is located in the Czech Republic. Pils is golden in color, has a strong flavor, and is
known for its impressive, creamy head. If you like a beer with a less bitter taste, Kolsch might be a good choice. It is the
only beer brewed in the area near Cologne, and should you venture into a German tavern there, it is the beer you are expected
to drink. People who favor old German beers should try Altbier, which is produced in the area of the lower Rhine and in
Duesseldorf. It is an old-fashioned dark, lager that is similar to bitters in England. An interesting sidenote involving
German beer has to do with how German steins came about--a stein is a beer container with a thumb-activated cover. At the
time of the black plague, Germany tried many ideas and laws to keep people from getting sick, and the stein was one of them.
The plague was spread by conditions that were unsanitary--one of the ways was when flies would land in people’s food
and spread the disease. Steins were made at first with stoneware and had pewter lids. They allowed people to continue to be
able to drink with one hand while the cover kept flies out of the beer.
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